


Always Your Choice

by Too_Much_Fandom



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Past Rape/Non-con, Period-Typical Sexism, strong!Tina, supportive!Newt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 02:20:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11636928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Too_Much_Fandom/pseuds/Too_Much_Fandom
Summary: Now that she's engaged to Newt, Tina can no longer put off opening up about her past.





	Always Your Choice

**Author's Note:**

> In case you don't pay attention to tags, this is the final warning: I tagged this rape/non-con. Only read if you can handle that.   
> Thank you MerryLilHobbit for being my beta again. You're the best!

“I think we’re done with the ‘out’ part of our evening. What do you say we head home for some private time,” she suggested, smiling coyly. 

 

“Certainly can’t object to that, love. You lead the way,” her dashing, ginger-haired fiance replied, offering up his arm to escort her. 

 

They were making their way out of the restaurant when a voice called out, “Tina? Tina Goldstein? Is that you?”

 

Tina whirled around and saw him coming after them. A tall, attractive young man, with dark, neatly styled hair and handsomely defined features. His dark suit was perfectly tailored, a muted tie sitting on his shirt just-so. He was not someone she wanted to see, now or ever. She froze.

 

“Long time no see,” he chuckled, a wide grin spreading across his face showing a brilliantly dazzling smile. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since graduation! And who is this young fellow escorting the lovely Miss Goldstein?” he pried, looking Newt up and down as though sizing him up. 

 

“Newt Scamander, and you are?” replied Newt, just the way he had on that fateful day when Tina had shoved him into a wall and demanded his identity before arresting him. He held out his right hand to the young man facing him now.

 

“Jason Bagman,” he answered, taking Newt’s hand in a firm shake. “British, huh? Guess us American fellas aren’t good enough for you, eh Tina?” he joked, looking back at her. She still didn’t answer, a false smile plastered on her face, trying to communicate to Newt through quick hand squeezes that she really really wanted to wrap this exchange up. It was then that Jason’s eyes caught the ring on her left hand.

 

“Oh, am I to understand that you’re to be congratulated?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. 

 

Tina gave a curt nod. Newt, still not reading her, beamed and delicately slid an arm around her waist. 

 

“Yes. We recently became engaged. So, I assume you know each other from school?” he politely inquired looking from Tina to Jason and back at Tina.

 

“Oh yes,” said Jason, looking at Tina in a way that made Newt supremely uncomfortable. Something about that look seemed off, though he couldn’t put a finger on it. “Tina and I went together at Ilvermorney. But that’s all in the past now, I’m sure you don’t want to know all that,” he winked suggestively at Newt. Newt was starting to find this fellow rather unpleasant. 

 

“Ah well, you’re a lucky one, you are,” Jason continued, “that Tina really is somethin’ special,” he leered at her in a way that caused her to tense up and Newt to tighten his arm around her protectively, while instinctively touching his wand with his free hand. It was so very off-putting, though Newt couldn’t figure out exactly why. All he knew was that he didn’t like this Jason Bagman at all. 

 

“Well, it was good making your acquaintance Mr. Bagman,” mumbled Newt, looking everywhere but at Jason, “we’d best be off now,” and he hustled Tina, who had finally unfrozen, out the door so they could quickly apparate back to her apartment. 

 

“I’m gonna go get washed up and ready for bed,” Tina said flatly when they got back. She headed off to her room and Newt waited for her to invite him in, though he could tell that whatever she might have wanted to do with him before they’d bumped into Jason Bagman was not going to happen now.

 

Newt became concerned after  20 twenty minutes when Tina still hadn’t emerged or called for him. He knocked on her door, “Is everything alright, love? Can I come in?”

 

“Yeah, I guess so,” came the reply.

 

Newt found Tina sitting on her bed, still dressed in her navy beaded dress and staring at the ceiling with glassy eyes. “You didn’t fancy that exchange, did you?” Newt asked, though it wasn’t really a question. Clearly she was shaken by running into her ex-boyfriend. Newt could certainly understand the sentiment. He’d feel the same if he were to bump into Leta these days.

 

“No, I didn’t,” she replied matter of factly. They were silent a few more minutes. Newt sat down on the bed next to her, but wasn’t sure if she wanted space or not, so did not reach out to her. Tina then broke the silence, “Newt, I need to tell you- well, I need to but don’t know how- There’s something you should know, though I don’t know how to say it,” she said, staring at his hands rather than looking him in the eye.

 

“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” Newt told her, tentatively taking her hand, “I can just be here with you if-”

 

“No, I really should tell you,” she cut him off, sighing, “I really should have told you sooner. We’re engaged now, you have a right to know. Besides, you laid out the whole Leta saga. It’s time I told you about what happened between me and Jason. I hope-I hope you still love me at the end of it…” she looked shamefacedly down at the floor.

 

“What on earth could change that?” Newt asked pulling her close. “Nothing,  _ nothing _ could make me stop loving you, Tina. Has the last year and a half not proven to you that despite what you may think of yourself, you are my everything?” 

 

“I suppose you’re right,” Tina looked back up at him smiling weakly. “Just-just bear with me, OK? It’s a little difficult to tell over.”

 

Newt nodded. Telling over the story with Leta had been painful too, and he’d had to stop and compose himself numerous times. He just kept holding Tina, and she began:

 

“Did you have dances at Hogwarts?” she started.

 

Newt found that a funny way to start, but obliged. “Yes, there was one right at the end of the fall term, before the break for Christmas. Rather stuffy thing, if you ask me.”

 

“Well, at Ilvermorney, we had 4 each year, and I quite enjoyed them,” chuckled Tina, “well, Queenie enjoyed them even more, but I had a good time too. She of course had all the fellas lining up to ask her to each dance, and I, well, didn’t. But I had a few guy friends and I would usually go with one of them, always just as friends. We always had a good time and there was no expectation of anything more than a fun night out with a friend. ”

 

“ Jason, though, well, I liked Jason. In that way,” she explained. 

 

Newt understood. This didn’t bother him. He was 31 and she was 27. He had of course expected that there may have been a few young men before him; even he’d managed to have a relationship before Tina, so surely she’d had at least one before him. 

  
  
  


“I’d liked him since 5th year,” she continued, “and we didn’t talk much though we shared a few classes so I did see him around a lot. I was so thrilled when he asked me to the Winter Dance! This wasn’t just as friends. He was actually interested in me. He liked me back.”

 

Newt heard the amazement in her voice that a boy could like her back. He didn’t interrupt, as this was her story to tell, but it never failed to amaze him how lowly she thought of herself. That’s why he worked so hard to make sure she always knew she was loved and cherished. By him.

 

“Of course Queenie could read my excitement and was determined to make the evening perfect for me,” Tina chuckled a little remembering Queenie’s enthusiasm about her first real date. “She did my hair, my makeup, and my dress. And it was quite a dress! It was within the dress code guidelines, but only just. It accentuated all my best features. Even I had to admit I got a slight hint of what it’s like to be like Queenie. ” 

 

“ Anyway, Jason couldn’t take his eyes off me the whole night. We danced and danced and had a wonderful time. As things were winding down, we snuck off to an empty classroom. Jason told me again and again how stunning I was and we kissed and I thought I could die happy right then and there!”

 

Newt nodded, remembering how things had started off with Leta. “I know the feeling. So how long did the relationship go on before whatever hurt happened between you?” 

 

Tina shook her head, “ W e never really started a relationship.”

 

“But Jason said you went together at Ilvermorny,” Newt started, confused.

 

“To the dance, yeah,” said Tina, “but it was never more than that.” She took a deep breath, steeling herself for the difficult part that was coming. 

 

“Our kissing got really heated and I felt his hands start to wander,” she pushed forward with her tale, and Newt could hear the slight quiver in her voice. “First, I felt a hand on my-on my b-breast. I didn’t feel comfortable with that, so I pushed it away. A few minutes later it wandered back, and I pushed it away again.”

 

Newt held her closer, protectively. He didn’t like where this was going, and Jason’s leer from earlier that evening, which he had found so off-putting, was now downright disgusting. 

 

“A few minutes later, I felt a hand on my thigh, making its way up my dress,” she continued, and Newt felt her shiver as she said it. “I broke off the kiss and said I was going to go back to my dormitory. Jason tried to convince me to stay, said it wasn’t fair of me to lead him on like that.”

 

Newt’s jaw dropped and his eyes grew wide and blazed bright green in indignation, but Tina, having already screwed up the courage to keep going, continued before he could say anything. 

 

“I told him sorry, I needed to go, and turned around to walk out. The last thing I remember before everything went black was the flash of red reflecting off the walls as his stunning spell hit me.”

 

Newt felt sick to his stomach. There was no doubt as to what was coming next. She still hadn’t gotten to saying it, but he knew then and there what she must have woken up to. “Oh, Tina,” he hugged her close and she relaxed in his arms. She was heaving now, as though about to cry, but tears didn’t fall. He held her for awhile, just stroking her short brown hair and pressing soft kisses to her forehead, until she was ready to continue. 

 

“I woke up, I don’t know how long it was. I think he revived me, because the first thing I saw when I woke was him scurrying out of the room while tucking his shirt in,” she pressed forward, this time with a flat affect, “the next thing I noticed was pain. Pain between my shoulder blades where the stunner hit me, and pain between my legs where he had clearly just...well... And my dress was torn too.” 

 

Newt felt a fury, a white-hot rage bubbling in his chest. He had an urge to run into his case right now and set his nundu loose after Jason. But Tina still wasn’t finished.

 

“I don’t know how long I was lying there. I was in total shock,” she continued, “but I stayed until Queenie found me.”

 

“How did she-” 

 

“Remember how she heard me when we were sentenced? That’s how she found us while we were running away after getting out of the Death Cell?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“There’ve been a few times in my life where I was in such extreme distress that Queenie heard me from a totally different part of the building,” Tina explained, “our death sentence was one of those times. This was another.” 

 

“Right,” Newt nodded, “and she got help?” 

 

“She walked me to the infirmary. She had enough of a head to warn me not to fix my dress, because we needed the evidence.”

 

“Your sister really does know how to keep a cool head in an emergency,” Newt mused.

 

“Yeah, I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

 

“So, I imagine Jason was expelled for his heinous crime,” Newt continued.

 

Tina snorted, “No, of course not.” 

 

“Are you joking?!” Newt asked incredulously.

 

“Nope,” Tina sighed. “I was released from the infirmary in the morning and sent to the principal’s office. He had already talked to Jason and heard his ‘version’ of the story. I could barely speak. Queenie barged in and was screaming at the principal, which of course got her a detention. She demanded that he check Jason’s wand, priori incantatum, you know, it would show he’d stunned me.”

 

“So why didn’t he?” asked Newt, still in disbelief.

 

“Because while it would show a stunning, there was no pinpointing the time or the circumstances in which it occurred. Maybe it was a game,“ she rolled her eyes, “and then he told me that the dress I had worn to the dance clearly indicated I had wanted Jason’s advances. And the fact that I’d willingly kissed him-”

 

“What does that have to do with anything,” said Newt quietly, though still unmistakably angrily, “so you wanted to kiss, that doesn’t mean you wanted to-to-”

 

“Newt,” said Tina, with tears springing to her eyes for the first time since she started sharing the story, “this is how it is for girls. If it wasn’t a criminal in an alley, if we weren’t behaving perfectly, then we can’t expect any differently from a guy. I mean, it’s terrible, but it is the way the world works. I even see it as an auror. I’ve arrested creeps who attack random women in the street, but when it’s a ‘domestic’ situation, I can’t haul the bastard in no matter how much I want to because he’s technically not breaking any laws.”

 

Newt just stared at her gaping. She continued while he struggled to form thoughts into words, “Anyway, the principal gave both me and Jason a month of detention for our ‘indecent behavior’. And we were both barred from attending dances for the rest of the school year. I got kicked off the honor roll. But other than that, back to business as usual for everyone. He even got to stay on his house’s Quidditch team and became captain the following year.”

 

The injustice rankled for Newt. He had been unfairly expelled from Hogwarts; how could someone who had actually committed an offense worthy of expulsion get off so lightly? No. There was no point in being angry. Well, there was in a broader sense; after all, there were many reasons why, with few exceptions, he didn’t like people much.  _ Add treating witches like objects to the list _ , he thought. 

 

But right now, there was only one thing for him to do. He squeezed Tina tight and dropped kisses into her hair. “Tina, I love you and it pains me to no end that you were treated like that. You did not deserve any of it,” he told her, “and as your husband-to-be, know that I will never ask of you to do anything you don’t want to. And though you’re definitely better than me at protecting the both of us, I will go to the moon and back to keep you safe.”

 

“I know Newt,” she turned to look at him, genuinely smiling for the first time since they’d gotten home that evening, “you were the first guy I was ever able to trust since then. Even though I most definitely mistrusted you when we first met.”

 

They both had a hearty laugh at that. “So, would you like to do anything more this evening? Or would you rather stay like this and go to sleep?” Newt asked. Then, dropping into a more serious tone, “your choice. Always your choice. I mean that.” 

 

Tina drew him down toward her for a kiss. “Just hold me till we fall asleep,” she yawned, “I love you so much. Thank you. For everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if that was rough :-( But I hope it was a good read. Kudos and kind comments appreciated (you can criticize of course, just be kind :-) )
> 
> Also, I called the guy Bagman because I just always thought Ludo Bagman was a jerk who got away with a lot of crap because he was a Quidditch star. Maybe it runs in the family.


End file.
